The Monster War: A Tale of the Kings' Blades (27 page)

“Wait!” Stalwart yelled, jumping up. “Badger, this is madness! It wasn’t Ambrose who caused all the deaths and suffering, it was your precious Ceri! Nythia didn’t rally to his banner, you know that. You heard the history lectures in Ironhall. Very few people supported him. Even your own father didn’t!”

Badger kicked the door with his boot. Bolts and bars began clanking.

“He had no claim to the throne of Nythia!” Stalwart shouted. “The royal line died out ages ago. If anyone is heir to the old princes, it is Ambrose himself, through his great-umpteenth-great-grandmother. The people didn’t want Ceri and his mad ambitions, nor his sinister friends, either.”

Badger had his face to the planks, his back to Stalwart, refusing to listen. Eilir was watching the argument with what might have been meant to be a smile.

“And you?” Stalwart yelled, turning on him. “Where does your loyalty come from? Just money? Friendship? Or are you as mad as the rest of them?”

“See this?” The Sergeant pointed to the nightmare ruin of his face. “I was about your age once, sonny. I looked human, those days. Quite good-looking, in fact.” He took a step closer. “Not now, though! I lived in Waterby, see? I wasn’t a soldier, not then. I was a glassblower’s apprentice. Then the war came, and the siege.” Another step made Stalwart recoil from the abhorrence leering closer. “Your precious Ambrose set his Destroyer General on us, hurling great rocks at the town. It was one of them hit a wall and exploded right in front of me.” Another step, and Stalwart was back against the chair. “All the rest of my family died, so I was lucky, wasn’t I?”

The door creaked. Stalwart ducked nimbly past the Sergeant and grabbed Badger as he tried to leave.

“Listen! Your darling Owen’s unstable as a two-legged horse. Maybe he was a father to you, but he cared so little for you later that he made you swear to kill yourself. He wants to torture me to death! He’s curdled in his wits. He’s a raving, demented—”

Eilir’s iron hand took him by the shoulder and hurled him back. His leg caught the chair and he pitched headlong. It was fortunate that he knew how to fall; perhaps even more fortunate that he was well padded by the thick gown and fur cloak. He didn’t break anything. The door boomed shut behind the two men. Then came all the noisy rigmarole of shutting it.

Groaning, the prisoner sat up and rubbed his knee, his shoulder. His elbow hurt, too. He was starting to shiver again. Dead men didn’t shiver.

A very soft whisper said, “Wart?”

Stalwart hurtled to his feet, knocked over the chair, banged his head on a dangling net full of onions, and hit the back wall at a gallop. He would have hit it with both shoulders had it been possible for his head to fit in the air shaft. “Em? That you?”

“Sh! Can you hear me—I mean, are you free to move around?”

“Yes!” His heart pounded. Funny—he felt almost more scared now than he had before. Now he had a friend out there. Now, just maybe, there was a chance of
not
dying?

She whispered, “I heard what they were saying, Wart, most of it. I sent old Mervyn for help, but they won’t get here until after dawn. Can you hang on until then somehow?”

Oh,
good
idea! As soon as help appeared in the valley, he would be tossed in the river. Dangerous evidence would never be left lying around Smealey Hole. He forced himself to speak slowly and calmly.

“Personally, I’m in no hurry, but they’ll move as soon as the novices have gone to sleep.” Owen had said that, implying that not all the residents of Smealey Hole were traitors. Stalwart would not repeat that to Emerald in case she developed some crazy idea of organizing a revolution. It would never work, because Eilir was certainly loyal to the Prior and his swordsmen controlled the valley. “Em, you’ve got to leave! One of us must survive to be a witness. Please go!” He found that horribly hard to say:
Please go away and leave me alone again
.

He was more frightened now than he had been in Quagmarsh. There he had been so buoyed up by his hatred of Thrusk that he’d had no time to despair. Besides, Thrusk had been a clod; Owen was freakishly clever. No one out-smarted Owen Smealey.

The whisper came again. “There’s a grille over this vent.”

“I know.”

“If I can get it off, I could give you your sword. Do you want it?”

Want it
? “Yes please.”
Yesyesyesyesyes
…If he had
Sleight
in his hand, he’d take on Badger and Eilir both. He could hold the door against the whole troop of men-at-arms for hours. It would change everything. They’d have to burn him out. Mervyn’s men coming at dawn…He tried not to cackle.

“Just a minute,” she whispered. “I’ll try a rock.”

“Wait! I’ll go and make a noise.”

Emerald said, “Right.”

Stalwart hurried across to the door. He could still hear faint voices out there, probably three of them. Men-at-arms soldiered for money and did not necessarily believe in their leader’s cause. He thumped the chair against the planks. “Traitors!” he yelled. “You’re going to lose your heads for this, all of you. I’m an officer of the Crown. Let me out and I’ll see you get royal pardons!” And so on—bang, yell, bang, yell…His efforts were ignored. Owen would have selected the guards with his usual care.

Eventually the prisoner decided that he had given Emerald enough time. If she had not opened the air shaft by now, she couldn’t. He went back to it. “Em?”

“Ready,” she said. “Stand clear.”

A faint scraping sound…then
Sleight’s
needle point came into view. He reached out and clasped the steel lovingly, pulled…
Clink
!…It stopped. His heart hit the floor. He felt Emerald ease the blade back, turn it, try again…. But he could visualize
Sleight’s
wide quillons and the narrow shaft and he knew that nothing was going to work. He would have known sooner if he had allowed himself to think about it. In a moment the blade was withdrawn.

“Wart?” Emerald whispered. “It won’t fit.”

“No.” He must try to think clearly. Ironhall taught that courage wasn’t just not being afraid, it was being afraid and doing your duty anyway. The more fear you felt, the braver you were. No shame in not wanting to die. Great honor in dying if you had to. “Nice try. Thanks. How much did you hear of what Badger said?”

“All of it, I think.”

“Good. Then I needn’t explain. I’m very grateful you came, but you really
must
go now! Please? Promise? No more heroics. It’s very important that you get back safely to explain what happened. That sorcery is terrible! So please go now.”

He probably wouldn’t rank a mention in the
Litany of Heroes
, but it would be nice if
Sleight
got to hang in the sky of swords.

After leaving the prisoner, Badger and Eilir walked back to the residence in silence, not sharing their thoughts. Badger felt awkward without the weight of a sword at his side. He hated the stupid sorcerer’s gown that Owen insisted he wear so he would not stand out and provoke questions. That was either an admission that not everyone in the Hole was completely trusted or just a reminder that Owen never completely trusted anyone.

As they walked into the candlelight entrance, the first person they saw was Owen himself—waiting for them, of course. Suspicious, of course. Standing so his hood shadowed his face, of course.

“Well?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” Badger said.

The only reason Owen had let him go to speak with Wart was to find out if Wart had anything up his sleeve. Frighten a man enough and he might blurt out secrets. It was unheard of for Ironhall candidates to be taken from the school before their binding, so of course Owen suspected that Wart had not been totally honest. Owen could not imagine anyone being totally honest. He was convinced that the kid was just bait on a hook and the Old Blades were skulking around, waiting to pounce.

“I still want to know why Snake sent a boy!”

Badger groaned. “Just what I said before—the Old Blades are run off their feet and this Smealey lead was a long shot. They sent the boy because he wouldn’t attract attention. Wart isn’t capable of lying on that scale. Snake is, certainly, but the kid is scared spitless. If he knew anything about a rescue coming he’d have told us.”

Owen’s restless gaze flickered to Eilir.

“I agree,” the one-eyed man said. “He didn’t try to bribe me, which I expected, but I’m sure he just didn’t think of it. He certainly wasn’t gloating as if we’d fallen into a trap.”

“He may not know about the trap.”

“Prior,” Eilir said patiently, “I really don’t think there is a trap.”

The sorcerer pouted. “Very well. Another half hour or so. Stay in here until then,” he told Badger. He stalked away.

Without looking at Eilir, Badger headed for the stairs. Treads creaked as he climbed—the same treads that had creaked when he was a child: the third, eighth, twelfth…. Half an hour gave him just enough time to do what he wanted to do. His bones ached from lack of sleep, but that was not the main reason he felt so miserable.

He would not describe Wart as a close friend, or even a friend at all. He didn’t have friends. But the kid was amusing company and not halfwitted like some Ironhall inmates. He was a fine lutenist, juggler, acrobat. He’d earned his living as a minstrel’s helper before he was even in his teens, whereas most of the others arrived there as useless trash. At times he had been a pest, but he didn’t deserve this death. At least it would be quick, now that Owen had been talked out of his more savage intentions.

Carrying his lantern high ahead of him, Badger started up a second staircase, a very narrow one.

Kill Ambrose by all means. But to do it by killing another man—or boy—seemed so unfair! Not that Badger was about to insist on sparing Wart so he could carry out his own suicidal assassination plot. One way or another, Wart must die. He knew too much now. It was not a happy thought. All right for Owen; as a soldier, he’d killed before.

The stair brought him to a narrow, cramped space under the ridge of the roof. Low doors led to attics where servants had slept in the old days, but there were no servants in the Hole anymore, and the novices occupied the old fieldworkers’ bunkhouses. Beyond these squalid sleeping quarters, angular nooks under the eaves provided hideaways for a billion spiders, storage for generations of junk, and play areas for small boys on wet days.

Badger went to the one he wanted and broke a fingernail prying open the access panel. It had not been moved since the day the last of the Smealeys were driven from their home. With less than an hour’s warning that the Sheriff was on his way, they had hidden their most precious keepsakes in these attic cubbyholes—nothing of real value, though. Golden plates and silver candlesticks had stayed on display because the King’s men would certainly have resorted to torture if they had not found the loot they expected. Here were only sentimental treasures, like the pictures Badger had come for. They were stacked exactly as he remembered leaving them. No one was less sentimental than Owen.

But the other things he had left on top of them were still there too, because he had never told Owen or even Anwen about those. Sword, horn, and dagger—personal treasures Ceri had left in the hollow tree. The horn and sword were ordinary, but the dagger was special.

Ceri’s claim to be rightful Prince of Nythia had relied on a very flimsy tale, the drunken ravings of a half-mad grandfather, and not the terrible Grandfather Gwyn, either. It was through Anwen that the royal pretension had come, descent from an illegitimate royal daughter, who had been ignored by historians and perhaps invented long after her death. No one had put much stock in this dubious ancestor, but she had been necessary, and had been accepted by the patriots. One of those supporters had presented Ceri with an ancient dagger bearing the green dragon emblem of the royal house of Nythia worked into the hilt in gold and jade. Ceri had worn it ever after, until that final night when he had shed his last hopes and finery and ridden off to ransom his mother and brothers. It was a beautiful thing still, and much too valuable to be abandoned. Owen should have it, for he was the pretender now, Prince of Nythia. Badger put it aside to take with him.

He took up the topmost portrait and held it near the glimmering lantern. The mice had pretty much ignored it; it had not warped or split. Because Edryd had preferred to work on sawn wooden panels, the portraits were all small, no more than heads and necks, not quite life-size. The first was of the artist himself, eyes fixedly staring out of the mirror he had used. And young! Of course Edryd could not have been much older then than Badger was now. That was an unwelcome surprise. He propped the panel against the wall and reached for the next, unable to remember the order in which he had left them, twelve long years ago.

The second picture was of Bevan himself, a grinning imp of a child with his silver lock prominent. No need to linger over that one.

The third was Aneirin. Poor, tortured Aneirin! Even then, in the golden days of youth before the uprising, life had never been easy for Aneirin. There had been voices and inexplicable changes of mood. Edryd had caught some of that agony in the lowered glance, the hint of sunken cheek.

Then Lloyd, the scholar, with chin cupped in ink-stained fingers, staring down at something not shown—a book, perhaps. Lloyd himself had long since returned to the elements, and only this likeness remained to show that he had ever existed.

Ceri was fifth. Again—how
young
! How very, astonishingly, young! Ceri looked no older than an Ironhall senior, but perhaps he had been only nineteen or twenty when he posed for his brother. Yet how magnificent, even then! The dark curls lapping the forehead, the line of jaw, eyes raised to horizons unseen by lesser mortals. The silver lock had been most marked on him—Ceri had excelled at everything, always. Even Edryd had been inspired to create a masterpiece when he painted that wonderful head, those shiny eyes, those lips about to speak.

How young! And how…How
what
? For a long time Badger held the panel, staring at it, teasing out every detail, analyzing it with the experience gained in the past twelve years—adolescence, the longest and most vital years in any man’s life…. How
what
? What exactly was it he was seeing there that he had not expected? A dreamer? Yes, but he had always known Ceri was a dreamer. Leadership, of course. Intelligence. Courage. What else? Ruthlessness? Rather call it ambition. He had known his rebellion would cost many men’s lives. He had known that his own chances must be least of all, and he had been willing to take that chance.

No, that still wasn’t it.
Idealism
? Badger had never thought of Ceri as an idealist. He himself certainly wasn’t. Childhood poverty as a foreigner in Isilond had wiped the stars from his eyes. Years of grind in Ironhall under selfimposed sentence of death had toughened him even further. Ceri had been a nobleman’s son, raised in luxury. Maybe Ceri had really expected to find justice and liberty and kindness in this world. Amazing!

Time was up. They would be starting soon.

Badger left the hatch open and everything else where it lay. Only the dagger he tucked out of sight under his robe. Taking up the lantern, he headed back to the stair.